DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
Monicen 1yr ago
Huh. From this science critique from twitter linked from your second link, it looks like there’s no normal virological study reasons to use such a roundabout way of cutting-and-pasting to synthesize SARS-Cov-2. Virus researchers would normally use far more blatant cut-and-pastes.
My Crichton-Sense tells me that means either the virus was genuinely found in the wild (or genuinely naturally descended from such a virus without meddling), or was synthesized in such a way to make virus researchers believe it was natural, by someone planning to use it and keep its origins obscure.
Or evolved in a lab but without active genetic engineering. You can infect lab animals and select for more potent viruses. And I think that is something that is done under the auspices of discovering potentially dangerous mutations that might occur.
That wouldn't leave any of the telltale markers of snipping and inserting genes, but could still lead to the creation of something nasty. And it would mean it was possible for the virus to be the result of human meddling, but not the result of an explicit attempt to hide that meddling.
Actively hiding the meddling seems really unlikely in the Wuhan labs, so if that's necessary, I think we have to default to the first option you provide, that it was found in the wild.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
Crake 1yr ago
The technique is called serial passage - the Wikipedia article is good on the science but appears to be censored re. use in GoF research on human pathogens. Obviously if the technique has been successfully used to produce a strain of bird flu adapted to ferrets then the possibility exists of using it of using it to produce a bat coronavirus adapted to humans.
Early in the life cycle of the lab leak theory, there was some speculation that this was what had happened, but the furin cleavage site suggests otherwise.
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Notes -
Huh. From this science critique from twitter linked from your second link, it looks like there’s no normal virological study reasons to use such a roundabout way of cutting-and-pasting to synthesize SARS-Cov-2. Virus researchers would normally use far more blatant cut-and-pastes.
My Crichton-Sense tells me that means either the virus was genuinely found in the wild (or genuinely naturally descended from such a virus without meddling), or was synthesized in such a way to make virus researchers believe it was natural, by someone planning to use it and keep its origins obscure.
Or evolved in a lab but without active genetic engineering. You can infect lab animals and select for more potent viruses. And I think that is something that is done under the auspices of discovering potentially dangerous mutations that might occur.
That wouldn't leave any of the telltale markers of snipping and inserting genes, but could still lead to the creation of something nasty. And it would mean it was possible for the virus to be the result of human meddling, but not the result of an explicit attempt to hide that meddling.
Actively hiding the meddling seems really unlikely in the Wuhan labs, so if that's necessary, I think we have to default to the first option you provide, that it was found in the wild.
The technique is called serial passage - the Wikipedia article is good on the science but appears to be censored re. use in GoF research on human pathogens. Obviously if the technique has been successfully used to produce a strain of bird flu adapted to ferrets then the possibility exists of using it of using it to produce a bat coronavirus adapted to humans.
Early in the life cycle of the lab leak theory, there was some speculation that this was what had happened, but the furin cleavage site suggests otherwise.
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